The first sign-up packets have been mailed and enrollment has finally begun in CalOPTIMA, the new health-care system designed to serve many of Orange County's poorest residents. * Officials of CalOPTIMA, a $400-million program that will debut Oct. 1, sent enrollment packets last week to about 56,000 households, or 190,000 potential participants, agency spokeswoman Kathi Crowley said Wednesday. Already about 4,000 enrollment forms have been returned, Crowley said.

A judge Tuesday denied a petition from a large national health corporation to halt enrollment in Cal-OPTIMA, Orange County's new managed-care system for Medi-Cal recipients. The petitioner, Maxicare Health Plans Inc., argued that enrollment should be stopped because the county lacks federal approval for the program and improperly spent public funds to set it up.

Cal-OPTIMA, Orange County's new Medi-Cal managed-care network, will enter contracts with 40 health-care providers from throughout the county, integrating new participants and long-term Medi-Cal providers in the novel system, officials said Wednesday. "We're very satisfied" with the level of response from contractors and with their geographic distribution, said Mary K. Dewane, chief executive officer of Cal-OPTIMA. "We continue to enjoy participation by a whole variety."

Burdened by the county bankruptcy and beset by delays in rate-setting by the state, leaders of the county's new managed health-care system for the poor Tuesday postponed the unprecedented program's start-up date by at least a month. * The delay, approved unanimously by the board of the new OPTIMA program, means the Medi-Cal system, designed to bring some 300,000 patients into managed care networks, won't be up and running until Sept. 1. Enrollment is scheduled to begin Aug. 1.

Optima Technologies said Monday it has agreed to sell its computer disk systems with software produced by Adobe Systems Inc. in Mountain View. Optima will include Adobe's well-known graphics and video programs with its systems that store computerized information on magnetic and optical disks. Other terms of the agreement were not disclosed. The goal of the two companies is to sell their products to markets such as graphics-design firms and video production companies, an Optima spokeswoman said.

The organization that is revamping Orange County's Medi-Cal system, which was imperiled financially by the county's bankruptcy, has accepted a $3-million loan from Kaiser Permanente of Southern California that should ease its fiscal woes. Officials announced the loan to the emerging OPTIMA program Monday with obvious relief, saying that if Kaiser had not stepped in, they might have been forced to interrupt much-heralded plans to bring 300,000 Medi-Cal recipients into managed-care networks.

For better or worse, the Laguna Beach Community Clinic won't ever be the same. Powerful forces are sweeping through Orange County, pushing it and other community-based health care agencies to collaborate and consolidate, in some cases dramatically altering the way they have done business over the years. OPTIMA, the county's fast-emerging Medi-Cal system for the poor, has some of these independent organizations scrambling to define their futures in the new age of managed care.

Ninety Orange County health-care organizations have sent notice that they intend to apply for participation in the county's reformed Medi-Cal system known as OPTIMA--a response one official described as overwhelming. "It's more than I expected, and . . . we're real pleased so many have come through," said Mary Dewane, chief executive officer of OPTIMA, a unique system that will bring the county's 300,000 Medi-Cal recipients into managed-care networks beginning in July.

This is to correct an error and to give credit where credit is due. The error was in a letter of mine about the county program OPTIMA, which you printed Nov. 20. What I said in the letter was based upon misinformation gleaned while talking with OPTIMA. Credit is due to Supervisor Harriett M. Wieder. Even though I do not live in her district, her office phoned me, asking if I had talked with OPTIMA. When I told Wieder's assistant that OPTIMA was where I had gotten my information, she told me that existing patient-doctor relationships will be continued and that there will be no problem about repeat visits for my ongoing conditions.